Riding Star

by Stacy Gregg

  He grinned at Georgie and she saw the brown bits of chewing tobacco stuck to his teeth. “Now, which horses are we putting on this one, and where are we headin’?”

  Georgie smiled. “Take us to the Bluegrass Cup!”

  *

  As they drove through the gates of the academy, it suddenly struck Georgie that they were wilfully disobeying Blainford rules by leaving the school. More than that, they were taking sixteen horses with them! This was not a casual disobedience, like walking on the quad. If they were caught, she didn’t even want to think about the trouble they would be in. She felt match-day nerves grip her, twisting a knot in her tummy.

  As they rolled in at 6am the polo grounds were already busy. Many of the teams had arrived the day before, and slept in their trucks overnight. Their ponies were kept penned in the yards beside them and the grooms were hard at work mucking out, feeding and watering. Georgie watched one groom working three ponies at once, mounted up on one and leading two others alongside her. The ponies were all immaculate, well-muscled with tails professionally taped and tack polished to perfection. The groom wore a shirt emblazoned with her patron’s logo. Many of these teams playing today had corporate sponsors who had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the best ponies and players. The sponsors had their own marquees along the sidelines of the four polo fields where the action would take place.

  As Riley eased the truck past the wash bays and parked in a vacant space, Georgie reached down beneath the seat of the truck and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “Is that the schedule? What time do we play?” Daisy asked.

  “Our game is at nine.”

  Kenny parked his truck alongside Riley and the riders all jumped out and dropped the ramps ready to unload.

  “I’ll go to the office and check on our registration,” Alice offered. She strode off across the field.

  “Let’s get started,” Georgie said. “We’ve got sixteen horses to bandage and tails to put up.”

  “We’re taping tails, remember,” Daisy instructed Georgie and Emily. “No Argie knots today – this is competition standard.”

  The girls busied themselves doing the legs, taking off the trucking boots and replacing them with polo wraps while Riley and Kenny unloaded all the tack from the trucks.

  “We so badly need grooms!” Daisy looked over enviously at the trucks where the polo players were lounging about and chatting over their coffee.

  “This is a crew ship, Daisy, not a luxury liner,” Georgie sighed.

  “It’s not a luxury – we need them,” Daisy pointed out. “Who’s going to keep the ponies warm, hang on to our sticks and run the pony lines for us between chukkas?”

  “Me and Kenny will cope,” Riley said. “We know the drill.”

  “We’ll saddle our first two ponies up to save time,” Georgie explained to Daisy and Emily. “When we come off after the first chukka, Riley and Kenny will take the saddles off our ponies and swap them on to the ones we’re riding in the third chukka. Then they’ll ride up the pony lines to warm up and have them standing by ready for us as we come off the field.

  “Which field are you on?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Georgie said. “Here comes Alice,” Emily said. “Let’s see what she’s found out.”

  “Ohmygod!” Alice had arrived back from the registration tent and she looked totally psyched.

  “I was just at the registration table signing us up and Adolfo Cambiaso was queuing right behind me! He is, like, a polo god! A ten-goal player. And he spoke to me!”

  “What did he say?” Emily looked amazed.

  “He said, ‘Are you in the right queue? This one is for the players.’ I told him I was a player, but I don’t think he believed me.”

  Emily looked nervous. “We’re not playing against him are we? Because that would be, like, insane.”

  Alice shook her head. “We’re in the low grade league, up against the Versailles Cavaliers. They’re a varsity team.”

  “What’s varsity?” Emily asked.

  “Like university, only American,” Daisy explained.

  “Does that mean they’re older than us?”

  “Look around, Emily,” Alice said. “The grass here is older than us.”

  “So what field are we on?” Georgie asked Alice. “Number three – the one over there underneath the trees. The game starts at eight-thirty.”

  “Eight-thirty?” Georgie squeaked. “I thought it was nine.”

  Alice shrugged. “Not on the schedule in the tent it isn’t.”

  “What’s the time now?” Georgie asked.

  “Seven-fifteen,” Riley replied.

  “Less talk and more bandaging!” Georgie said. “We need all of these ponies ready in one hour.”

  By eight-fifteen the girls had their ponies saddled and ready on the sidelines of field number three, that was where they got their first glimpse of the Cavaliers.

  “You’re kidding me!” Emily said. “We’re up against them?”

  The Cavaliers were fully grown men with broad shoulders and legs that were so long they could have powered the ponies along with their feet.

  “Well what did you expect?” Daisy said matter-of-factly. “This is an open league game.”

  Emily groaned. “They’re going to cream us.”

  “They are if you think negatively like that,” Alice snapped at her. “I didn’t smuggle sixteen horses out of Blainford Academy so that I could go down in the first round!”

  “Our size is our advantage,” Georgie insisted. “These guys won’t rate us as competition. They certainly won’t consider us to be a threat. But we’re small and we’re fast. If we play an attacking game right from the start, before they know what’s hit them we can get some points on the board.”

  “Uh, question?” Daisy raised her hand. “We’re all talking tactics, but someone actually has to run the show once we’re on the field, right?”

  “You mean a captain?” Alice asked.

  Daisy nodded. “I think it should be Georgie. She knows the rule book back to front.”

  “But Alice is the better player,” Georgie said.

  “No,” Alice shook her head. “You should be our captain, Georgie. You’re better at making the calls and besides, you started all of this.”

  “Totally,” Emily agreed, doing a mock salute. “Ready for your orders, captain.”

  *

  As the girls took to the field they looked absurdly out of place lining up against men who were twice their size. The Cavaliers captain in the number one jersey took one look at his competition and raised his mallet to appeal to the referee.

  “Hey, ref! Who rostered us on to play a bunch of girls?” he demanded. “Call the organisers over to sort this out!”

  Georgie cantered up to the Cavaliers captain. “There’s nothing to sort out. You’re supposed to be playing us.”

  “I’m not playing with girls.”

  “What are you, five years old? Of course you’re playing us. Unless you want to forfeit the game.”

  “Yeah,” Alice shouted out, backing her up. “We’re here to play, so let’s play.”

  The Cavaliers captain turned to the referee. “This is a joke!”

  “Well, I’m not laughing and neither are they,” the referee responded. “Come on, you’re holding up play. Let’s get this game started.”

  As the bell sounded the Badminton girls leaped straight into action, Georgie winning the throw-in and sending a shot blasting through the players towards Daisy in centre field. Before the Cavaliers could even mount an attack, Alice was up at Daisy’s side to receive the pass. There were two Cavaliers close on her tail, but she stayed focused and cantered up on Desiray to take a shot at the goal with a powerful forehand swing. The ball shot straight between the posts. Badminton had their first points on the board after less than a minute of play!

  Shocked by this sudden goal the Cavaliers tried to regroup, but they had no idea how to deal with this pack
of young players. The girls were small and swift and made the men look like they were laden with sandbags.

  Alice, Emily and Daisy had chosen Dupree ponies for the first chukka, but Georgie had decided to ride Belle as the mare was quick on the break and utterly fearless.

  When Georgie took the ball off a Cavalier and made a sprint up the field towards her goal, Belle proved her worth by out-galloping two Cavaliers and then shoulder-barging another so that Georgie could take her shot. The first Cavalier she’d passed was trying to ride up the other side to block the goal mouth, but Daisy rode him off with a knee-barge to leave the goal open so that Georgie could shoot and score. Goal number two!

  The score was two-nil to the girls as they came off the field.

  In the pony lines Riley was already standing by with Georgie’s next mare, Jet. Georgie dismounted and mounted up again, but she noticed that the Cavaliers had a far cooler way of swapping horses. They simply got their grooms to line their new mounts up alongside them and then vaulted from one horse to the next so that their feet never touched the ground.

  “You see?” Daisy said, watching the Cavaliers. “This is why we need our own grooms!”

  “Well, it’s not helping them win the game, is it?” Alice pointed out as she dismounted and grabbed Will’s reins from Kenny.

  “They’ll take us seriously from now on,” Georgie pointed out. “They’re going to come back at us with everything they’ve got in the second chukka.”

  “Well then, we need to raise our game,” Alice said.

  Georgie turned to Emily. “You’re doing a great job in defence. This time do some big shots up the field and Alice and I will chase the ball where it lands.”

  “What about me?” Daisy asked.

  “You’re our Hell-raiser,” Georgie said. “Drop back from your frontline position and tackle hard every time they get the ball, ride them off their line.”

  “But they’ll get a penalty if I foul them!”

  “The ref’s not going to call foul on you!” Alice said. “You’re just a girl, remember? How can a girl foul some big guy on a varsity team?”

  In the second chukka Daisy rode so hard at the Cavalier’s players that at one point she almost knocked the number three off his horse.

  “It wasn’t on purpose!” Daisy objected. “I was just trying to get the ball.”

  By the end of chukka two the Cavaliers had managed one goal to the girls’ two. The score was now four-one to the Badminton House team and on the sidelines a crowd was beginning to gather.

  By chukka three the Cavaliers came back with a vengeance, but the girls were ready for them.

  “We’re already in the lead so the next two chukkas should be all about defence,” Georgie said. “I’m going to stay back with Emily to protect the goal; Alice and Daisy, you’re on your own.”

  It was a sound tactic. The Cavaliers simply couldn’t get the ball past Georgie and Emily and when they made a crucial mistake in a lineout Alice capitalised on it, sent a pass up to Daisy and the three girls watched as Daisy went on alone against two Cavaliers, rode them off and made the goal!

  There were cheers from the sideline as the girls took to the field for the final chukka ahead by five points to one. The Cavaliers had a no-prisoners attitude, but they got called for fouling when one of them got too rough with Emily and there was a penalty shot from the goal mouth. Daisy shot the ball screaming through the goal. The girls had won in a landslide – six points to one!

  There was a huge roar from the crowd as the final bell went. On the field the girls hugged before pulling themselves together and organising their horses in a line to ride up and shake hands with the Versailles Cavaliers.

  “Good game,” Georgie smiled at the Cavaliers captain as he shook her hand. “Whatever,” he grunted in reply.

  “They weren’t very good sports about it, were they?” Emily said as the girls left the field.

  “Think about it from their point of view,” Alice said. “It must be like losing to your kid sister.”

  “Shameful,” Daisy agreed.

  The girls were heading back towards the sidelines when a man with a thick thatch of jet-black hair came out of the crowd and strode across the field towards them.

  “Congratulations, Georgie,” he called out. “An unexpected win – I imagine it will be the upset of the day.”

  The man looked smug as he added, “Especially since you aren’t meant to be here.”

  Georgie was mortified. She was face to face with the last person she had expected or wanted to see. It was Heath Brompton, the Blainford Academy polo master.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The thrill of victory was short-lived.

  “I have no idea how you girls organised this little escapade,” Heath Brompton said, “and I’m not about to discuss it now. Clearly you have contravened Blainford rules and you are out of school bounds without permission.”

  “But, sir—” Georgie started. But Mr Brompton cut her dead.

  “We are not discussing this, Parker. Get your horses loaded on the trucks and get them back to school. You will meet me at Mrs Dickins-Thomson’s office this afternoon at four and we’ll resolve this matter then.”

  It was a grim ride back in the horse truck. Nobody spoke. Back at the stables they unloaded the polo ponies and led them back to their boxes, rugging them up and leaving them with their hard feeds. By the time they were done it was only twelve o’clock. They had another four hours to kill before they were due at the headmistress’s office.

  “We could go and watch the end of the Round Robin,” Emily suggested.

  “What’s the point?” Alice said. “We’re already in trouble; I don’t think turning up for the second half of the tournament is going to dig us out of this mess.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Emily said. “It’s just that Alex is playing and I thought it would take our minds off things, you know, until the meeting.”

  “What do you think Mrs Dickins-Thomson is going to do to us?” Daisy asked. “Do you think we could be expelled?”

  “Ohmygod!” Emily was shocked. “Mum and Dad are going to kill me!”

  “Whoa!” Alice raised her hands. “Everybody calm down. You’re blowing this out of proportion!”

  “No, I’m not,” Daisy said. “We were off school property without permission. That’s suspension at least!”

  Emily groaned. “I wish the meeting was now. I want to get it over and done with.”

  “Come on,” Georgie said. “Let’s go and change into our whites and watch the polo until we’re called to the gallows.”

  *

  The Luhmuhlen game helped to relieve the tension as the girls cheered for Cam, Alex and JP. It was a good game too – the boys narrowly losing to a very good Lexington team in the semifinal round. As the clock ticked closer to 4pm, Georgie tried to focus on watching the final match, but all she could think about was the trouble they were in – and the fact that it was all her fault.

  “No, it’s not,” Daisy insisted as the four girls walked up the driveway after the last game, heading for Mrs Dickins-Thomson’s office. “It was my idea that we go and play the Bluegrass Qualifier.”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself, Georgie,” Emily added. “We knew the risks. We wanted to play badly enough to take them.”

  Georgie shook her head. “There’s no reason for us all to get expelled. Let me tell Mrs Dickins-Thomson that it was my idea and I made you guys do it.”

  “You’re not really grasping the whole team spirit thing, are you?” Alice replied. “We’re in this together. That’s how this started and that’s how it will end, OK?”

  “Yeah, Georgie,” Daisy agreed. “There is no ‘I’ in team.”

  “There’s a ‘me’ though, if you jumble it up,” Emily added.

  The others stared at her.

  “It’s just a joke,” Emily said. “You know, to lighten the mood before we all get expelled.”

  At the top of the stairs Heath Brompton was wai
ting for them at the door of Mrs Dickins-Thomson’s office. Georgie could have sworn she saw a satisfied smirk pass over the face of the polo master as he ushered them in.

  Four chairs were already lined up waiting for them in front of Mrs Dickins-Thomson’s desk and the headmistress was standing there, beckoning for them to take a seat.

  “Mr Brompton has filled me in on the rather surprising developments at the Bluegrass Cup,” Mrs Dickins-Thomson said. “I cannot believe you girls would defy school rules and take yourselves off to a polo competition without permission. Do you understand the distress and embarrassment you might have caused if something had happened to you? No one from the school even knew where you were!”

  “Yes, they did—” Emily began her sentence and Georgie panicked. Emily was going to blab that Kenny had been there with them. If Mrs Dickins-Thomson found out, the school caretaker could be fired! Thinking fast, Georgie lashed out and gave Emily a brutal kick under the desk.

  “Ow!”

  Mrs Dickins-Thomson frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Georgie said hastily. “You’re right. No one at the school knew where we were – but there were four of us there, and we’re old enough to look after ourselves.”

  “Four of you – and sixteen horses!” Mrs Dickins-Thomson pointed out. “You are responsible for the care of these animals. Taking them off school property and going to an open event like this is unthinkable. And Mr Brompton told me you were up against the Versailles Cavaliers! You could easily have been hurt playing against grown men!”

  “Not the way they played!” Alice couldn’t help muttering.

  “I’m sorry? What do you mean, Alice?” Mrs Dickins-Thomson said.

  “I mean those guys never laid a hand on us,” Alice said. “They weren’t fast enough. And they weren’t very good sports about it either.”

  Mrs Dickins-Thomson stared at Alice. “Alice Dupree. Are you telling me that your team won? That you actually beat the Versailles Cavaliers?”

  “Totally!” Alice said. “We whupped them by six goals to one.”

  Mrs Dickins-Thomson was stunned. “But they’re a top varsity team, aren’t they?”